


My Dear Lost One

by mutual_curiosity



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutual_curiosity/pseuds/mutual_curiosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your parents failed in raising you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Dear Lost One

Why does tragedy exist?

Because you are full of rage.

Why are you full of rage?

Because you are full of grief.  

— Anne Carson, _Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides_   

 

 

 

You were born from nothing into a world to which you don't belong. 

A stranger without origins, that is why you are so strange - why the other ghouls look at you as if you were a freak. Because of course you are, your birth was impossible, a mistake.

And mistakes must be erased and forgotten, a blemish to all those who remember. 

So you and Noro run, because they will not leave you be. They want to kill you or eat you, either way your existence is unacceptable to them. Among humans, you feel overwhelmed and directionless in a sea of people. They walk so purposefully, returning to families, to homes. You only have the faintest, most abstract idea of what these words mean.

:: 

The world is a cruel place, unfair and full of hate.

So you are more than a little surprised that all you need to do is sign your name on a card to gain access to the stacks of books in the public library. When you are too young to fight back yet, you find the quiet reading area in the back and stay, nose burrowed in a book until closing time. The librarians recognize you upon first glance and smile warmly at you. They tell you when new releases come in and give recommendations. You briefly wonder if your mother would have read to you, if your ardent love of books is something else, something deeper.

You clean through the young adult's section in no time, and decide you're ready to move onto more "mature _"_  literature.

In young adult novels, characters are likable, or at least with their redeeming qualities. The plot and the character arcs are all neatly finished, and you like the feeling of satisfaction in coming full circle when you reach the end of a story.

Venturing into adult fiction, what little hope and optimism you have left is crushed. 

Tropes are subverted, inverted and defied. It's a breath of fresh air, but leaves you wanting. You finish novels upset. You recognize the tragic flaws and every misstep the characters take and want to scream at them to have acted differently. Critics and reviews claim the books are "gritty, harsh like reality," with "bitter truths."

Suddenly you realize that characters are not people. Plots and the development (or devolution) arc of characters are all carefully constructed, meant to make a statement about human nature or some equally lofty claim about the world. The author is God to his creations, who are mere puppets in a show for the reader.

And when you come to terms with the fact that your coming of age story will never end, that there will never be a time when you feel complete or wanted, you stop running.

::

It is around this time that Noro thinks you old enough and gives you peculiar, bound notebook. It's your mother's journal. You are excited and afraid; you wonder if it's better not to know, but curiosity eats away at any illusion of self-restraint. It is witness account to a time when you were once whole. 

After you devour its contents in one sitting, you think abandoning one's child must either be the most selfless or most selfish act in the world.

You decide it's the latter.

::

You decide to try your hand at God.

On paper and off.

You make a place for yourself in both worlds, ghoul and human. But you are a popular novelist in one and the One-Eyed King, head of Aogiri tree in the other. You cannot be whole in either, so you learn to easily slip back and forth into each persona.

You observe your "father" through the window of his little coffee shop one day out of boredom. You hear that Anteiku is a "safe haven" and "refuge" for ghouls. There are a couple of dark haired children hanging around the bar stools at the counter. Watching him so freely help others with no relation to him feels like a slap in the face.

Noro is your only family.

Blood means nothing.

There is no love in you for someone who brought you into this world, only to leave you alone, with nothing but a name and a horrific tale detailing the circumstances of your wretched existence, and the failure of a parent. 

:: 

_One can only destroy the things one cannot change. This can be said of me, a person who left in the womb everything that was needed._

::

You remember the first time you read Kafka. 

Characters who have done no wrong are punished. They fight valiantly against their fate, and succumb anyway, because they never had a chance (not a real one). Apt commentary on life, you think. Kafka never meant for his writing to be published and most of his work was published after his death. You find comfort in his writing, and admire its perfection in its incompleteness.

In an absurd world where one is executed for unnamed crimes and doomed to never arrive at the intended destination, how should one act?

Submit to the chaos, then become its master.

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly a self-indulgent piece, so apologies for any OOCness. I projected a lot of my own thoughts and feelings onto Eto (hence the second person POV). After reading tg, though I loved all the characters, I didn't really identify with anyone. But after reading :re, I identify with Eto and Kaneki's stories so much my soul hurts.


End file.
